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Get Four
|  | APRIL 26, 2006
By Ronald Grover Starbucks Perks Up Socially Conscious FilmsThe coffee chain wants to be the center of a multimedia empire and is betting its brand demographic will put butts in seatsStarbucks Chairman Howard Schultz has gone Hollywood. He sits on the Dreamworks Animation (DWA ) board. And the night before we met, the Brooklyn-born coffee king walked the red carpet as paparazzi snapped away at Akeelah and the Bee stars Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett. The next day, Schultz, resplendent in an open-collar white shirt and a gold silk blazer, worked the crowd at a Starbucks near USC while Bassett and Keke Palmer, the film's precocious 12-year-old star, waited for some local kids to stage their own spelling bee among the lattes and frappuccinos. If Schultz, 52, has his way, Starbucks' (SBUX ) 11,000 worldwide coffee houses will become the upscale moviegoer's McDonald's (MCD ). But where Mickey D's pushes Disney's (DIS ) animated flicks with Happy Meals and toys, Starbucks is using its potent brew of atmosphere and overpriced drinks to introduce its patrons to socially conscious flicks. THE RIGHT CUSTOMERS. Starbucks' first McMovie is Akeelah and the Bee, an uplifting tale of an African-American girl who overcomes a doubting mother to make it to the finals of a national spelling bee. "Our customer is the demographic that Hollywood needs as it is facing a double-digit decline in the box office and slowing DVD sales," says Schultz (see BW Online, 1/24/06, "Will Bubble Burst a Hollywood Dogma?"). "We have a unique cross-section of assets -- a foundation of trust and confidence in Starbucks -- that can promote a movie that our customers know is relevant." Maybe so. But Starbucks has yet to prove that plastering placards on coffee-house windows and tables will turn caffeine fiends into moviegoers. Still, the promise of bringing an audience to their flick is one reason that the film's executive producers, Internet billionaire Mark Cuban and his filmmaking partner Todd Wagner, love associating Akeelah with the coffee chain. "Starbucks has created a retail environment where people come in and pay attention to what's going on around them rather than just trying to get in and out," Mark Cuban wrote me in an e-mail. "They want you to use your laptop, read the paper, talk to friends. It's the perfect environment to be exposed to new cultural opportunities, particularly movies." IN-STORE PROMOTION. And Starbucks is shelling money out to promote the film -- no one will say how much exactly -- for the chance to expose folks to "new cultural opportunities." The coffee chain gets a producer's credit on the film and a share in its profits -- if indeed there are any -- in exchange for putting out placards, displaying chalkboards behind the registers counting down to the film's Apr. 28 release, and encasing coffee cups in sleeves that sport words from the fictional spelling bee. ("Euonym" -- which means a well-suited name -- adorned the sleeve of my coffee cup on a recent visit.) Go to Starbucks.com, and you can buy the soundtrack, along with other CDs that Starbucks sells at its coffee houses. Schultz, who sees a Starbucks store as the "third place" in a person's life -- after home and work -- has been pushing his chain into the entertainment business since the 1999 acquisition of music retailer Hear Music. Starbucks has since created three Hear Music coffeehouses, where folks can not only buy CDs but download them while sipping away. According to Schultz, the Hear Music stores are already profitable. But does Starbucks have the heft to launch a movie? Lionsgate, which is releasing Akeelah, will spend some $20 million to promote the movie (apart from the Starbucks deal) and has lined up sponsors such as Scrabble and Scholastic magazine to help. The studio is staging special screenings to get word-of-mouth going, including ones hosted by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Yet the studio fears it might not be enough. CROSSOVER DREAMS .Akeelah is clearly aimed at African-American audiences, according to Tom Ortenberg, president of theatrical distribution for Lionsgate. "We know that this picture plays so well once you get people to see it," he says. "But a film with predominately African-American actors usually doesn't play as well with white audiences if it doesn't feature actors like Will Smith or Denzel Washington." Lionsgate is counting on Starbucks to help the film become a crossover hit. That's one reason it happily agreed to add Starbucks to the marketing plan -- and to give the java joint a producing credit. Schultz, a bundle of optimism amidst the USC crowd, figures it's a slam dunk. His top entertainment executive, Ken Lombard, a one-time executive with Magic Johnson's business empire, is already scouting out new scripts. And down the road, Lombard says, the company intends to go into the book-selling business as well. It's all part of building Starbucks into the leisure industry's new best friend.  Grover is Los Angeles bureau chief for BusinessWeek
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